SHAW LANE
PA
Could you start by telling a bit about your role and how long you’ve been here?
I’ve been here just over a year. I came on secondment from another innovative
school which had just had an outstanding Ofsted in all four categories and my
own department was the only one to consistently achieve outstanding
throughout the inspection and the Ofsted inspector said that ‘this woman is
ready for the senior leadership team’ so, on the back of our Ofsted, I found
myself, four months later, here and I was here for six weeks and they asked me
to do some twilight sessions on assessment for learning and independent
learning and a bit on data. And these sessions were well attended and very well
received by staff and, on the back of that, they asked me if I would like to come
back after the summer and then, by the October half term, they offered me a
position in teaching and learning. I have been a head of department for fifteen
years and I’m an Advanced Skills Teacher and I did consultancy for Birmingham
LEA for Gifted & Talented so this post was pretty much up my street.
PA
So you’re assistant head for teaching and learning?
Yeah.
PA
Just remind me about that area especially with regards the other assistant
heads.
Well assessment and curriculum is done by Barry who is the senior deputy. Then
you’ve got the acting deputy head who used to do this role and she is in charge
of staffing and CPD. The previous person for inclusion used to be a deputy head
but she’s on sick now and so we’ve got Janet acting as assisting head teacher
for inclusion and so that’s behaviour and child protection and all of those things.
And then we’ve got, on the leadership team, the business manager and we’ve
got the head’s PA and a HR person. We’ve also got an assistant head for
vocational and I’m in charge of teaching and learning.
PA
So you’ve got quite a big team there and then you’ve got a tier of middle
leadership underneath.
Yes we have. Heads of faculty and, within each faculty, you have heads of areas
so, within humanities = the original structure was that the head of humanities
was the head of geography and then you had a head of history and a head of
RE. So, within a faculty and depending on the size of it, you’ve got people who
are head of child care or sociology etc.
PA
Is this an effective structure?
I think it’s similar to how most schools work. A lot of the strategic stuff comes
from the top; we have curriculum meetings in school time which is quite
unusual. We finish teaching early every Wednesday and we have a two hour slot
used for training or for meetings. In that sense I would say the structure is very
effective because what gets discussed at leadership is then presented at the
middle leaders’ level and people are given the opportunity to go away and
discuss and bring things back. On the really big things like we’ve just arranged
to change the teaching and learning policy so we tend do inset groups and
anyone is allowed to come and then those views get fed back into leadership
and we decide which are the best aspects of what they’ve come up with and we
will always say why we didn’t use a particular idea so that everybody feels that
their opinions are taken seriously. The example I’d give you is that we wanted
to change the lesson plan because we thought there was a lot on it and when
Assistant head
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SHAW LANE
we presented it to the (?)SIT group they said ‘no, it’s fine; we don’t want to
change anything’. ‘But we’re not a specialism school anymore because
specialism doesn’t exist’. ‘Ok we’ll take that off’. But that was the only thing
they wanted to change. But we decided to put assessment for learning on the
lesson plan. So we did listen but then we decided that assessment for learning
was far more important and so we put it on and we explained why to the staff.
The staff are given an opportunity to feed in and it’s not just top down.
PA
It sounds like you have different forums //
Definitely. We have briefing three times a week and Alison will share whatever
snippets she has picked up during the week. So she is feeding little bits in
throughout the week so that nothing comes as a total surprise.
PA
So tell me about the leadership capacity and how that is developed in the
school.
Well they have an opportunity here = the heads of faculty were asked if they
would be interested in further leadership opportunities and every year one head
of faculty will be seconded onto SLT. Jane is on SLT at the moment and she
takes a project on-board and she’s done a girls into science project as part of
her transition programme in Year 7 and then next year we are going to have the
head of humanities on the SLT. So I would say that that is the most direct and
obvious one but I also know that Gail has sent three or four people with head of
department potential onto head of department training at Valley Road Academy
and the staff have received that really well. We’ve also done reviews of each
department and, as we are going through, people that we see who are very
good solid teachers, we will put a few of them on the outstanding teacher
programme. So there is all this scope for looking at how we can help people
improve and I do know that, recently, they’ve just appointed five new people
internally: people who were interested in being head of department and who
need some sort of leadership capacity to move themselves forward. So there
have been two new TLRs in science and two in social sciences and one other. So
there were five appointments that were made - so they are thinking about how
they can develop teachers. Alison is very hot on succession planning and I know
that even though the SEN is quite new in her position she has already set her
sights her. In Year 7 the weaker ability groups stay with at least one teacher for
five or six of their lessons and so Alison has already got in her mind that Marie
will be the next person, hopefully, that she’ll groom up to take on the SEN
position. So she is very good at looking at what might happen in the future. And
because of that she said that she is thinking about restructuring because the
structure that she’s got at the moment – she lost two members of her
leadership team for various reasons and she felt it sort of came crashing down.
But she feels that if she changes the structure if somebody disappears then the
structure is still sound. So different people will be trained to do the same role so
if one goes the work can still be done. So that is how she is thinking in terms of
restructuring and I think she started thinking about that since about February.
PA
So the idea of succession is quite key to the way the leadership structure is
organised.
Oh definitely. I worked in a very good school in the area but when the head
teacher left none of his deputies could apply for that position because nobody
had the right experience. I think they ended up with the wrong head teacher for
three years and that school declined. But if they’d had thought about succession
planning they would have thought about building up one of those deputies at the
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SHAW LANE
very least in order to carry on but there was no one who could have stepped
into his shoes. So you then realise that succession planning is so important.
PA
What was the age demographics for the staff in that school?
I think the ordinary staff and the heads of department were quite young and
only one member of the leadership team plus the head were near retirement
age and the rest of them were young enough to have carried on. But they were
not trained to take on that position. And Alison is very hot on wanting her
leadership team to reflect the make-up of her school. She won’t have someone
just because they are from an ethnic minority because they will have to be good
but she feels that it is important to have good teachers from ethnic minorities if
you want to show pupils the right role models and to say that if these people
can make it then you can. I mean I was brought up in this area and I went to a
school up the road and although I do know my stuff Alison said that one of the
reasons she wanted me was because I was like these girls and when I say to the
Year 11s that I was born and brought up in this area they are aghast. So I like
the freshness in the way Alison looks at how to provide the right role models for
the girls in her school but also wanting the best people to deliver the best
outcomes for the students.
PA
How much would you say that the school is led by external policies?
I would say yes given the reviews that we are doing at the moment. From
September there is no more ‘satisfactory’ so anybody now who gets a
satisfactory automatically has to go on a coaching and mentoring programme
and if that fails there is a buddy system that comes in. And that has purely been
dictated by the Ofsted framework and handbook. And it’s staff knowing that –
because we are due another Ofsted soon – if any category becomes three the
whole school will be given three. So I would say, very much where Ofsted is
concerned, we are very driven by policy and even things that are to do with
computer science and many schools are moving towards that and we’ve already
two lots of years doing computer science here. I mean Barry is very adept at
reading the new stuff and trying to almost get things into place even before we
are told to get them in place. So we don’t seem to be chasing out tail and, if
anything, we are almost there waiting and preparing in advance. But I would
say that we are influenced very strongly by outside policies.
PA
Is that a good thing?
Well with the Ofsted situation we haven’t got a choice because if you don’t take
on-board what they say you’ll get into trouble. Nobody wants to be in a category
and anybody who has worked in a school that has been in a category it’s not a
pleasant experience. So I guess you haven’t got a choice and you have to be
seen to be acting and there is nothing wrong with a teacher getting satisfactory
but it’s for us as a school to say how we are going to deal with that and improve
the situation. But sometimes I think we should be given a choice and they spend
all this money on revamping the National Curriculum and then they say that
academies can do what they want. So why have they spent all that public
money doing this? But that’s just my personal view.
PA
How would you describe the standard of teaching and learning in the school at
the moment?
I would say it is very comfortably good. We want it to be better because we
need more outstanding. For us to get outstanding in our Ofsted we need more
teachers delivering outstanding lessons. But I do feel that information is power.
Assistant head
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SHAW LANE
My previous schools have always been outstanding and the key thing is about
sharing your vision so that people know why we are moving in this direction. For
us to get outstanding in teaching and learning then ninety per cent of our staff
need to deliver good and outstanding lessons. So you need to share the
information with staff so that they understand why we’re focusing on the
outstanding criteria. It’s when you make decisions and you don’t explain things
that people get frustrated and begin to feel stressed. So it’s very much about
sharing the vision and saying that this is what we stand for and this is where we
need to be and these are the steps we need to take us there. I do think that
Alison does work in that fashion.
PA
Are there certain external policies that affect your area?
Ofsted is the obvious one.
PA
How much of teaching and learning is guided by the Ofsted framework?
All of it.
PA
What about the teaching standards?
Well we use the Blue Sky system which allows us set our targets within that
system. All lesson observations are recorded in that system //
PA
They’re all linked to the teaching standards.
Yes they are. And we all have to do a review of our teaching standards each
year. So I do work very closely with Gail where that is concerned. When I’m
doing that role I’m thinking action research and getting staff on further
education courses such as MA so that there is a benefit in there for them and it’s
not just about the school benefitting. But I’m new to this role as well because
I’ve been a head of faculty for the last fifteen years.
PA
Were you coasting in that role?
I wasn’t coasting but I was ready for something else. The Ofsted inspector said
that it was obvious that I was ready for something else.
PA
Have there been any structural changes in teaching and learning in this school?
Well, as I said, any person who gets a three or four will have to go onto a
coaching and mentoring programme even if they are teachers who have
previously delivered outstanding lessons before. In terms of consistency
everybody has to be seen to be treated the same. We have ‘Top Tips’ every
Thursday morning to give suggestions for teachers to try and every Wednesday
afternoon we have a strong focus on teaching and learning and that seems to
have turned the school around. Teaching and learning is the bread and butter of
what we do. There was a situation in history where, basically, I ended up picking
up two GCSE classes in February and even though I’m a historian I’m a modern
historian and this was Medicine Through Time and although I had all this stuff to
do I just got on with my teaching and I said that all the paperwork would have
to wait because my first job is to be a teacher.
PA
Tell me about the appraisal system here?
It’s very well structured. It starts in October and members of senior leadership
have different faculty people to be in charge of. We had a one day in October to
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SHAW LANE
set the target reviews and there is a clear structure: three for teachers; four if
you are on a TLR and five if you are on the leadership team. I think Alison has
reviewed that with performance related pay coming in so I think she had cut
down the targets that teachers are meant to have. And then we have a mid-year
review around March time and all of this is done through Blue Sky and they’ve
really pushed the idea that performance management is not a whip for us to be
beaten with and it’s meant to be about self-development. And she has been
very strong on putting that message across and bringing outside people in on
our Wednesday afternoons to also reinforce the message that it is not just here
but this is happening right across the country. Our system is actually quite a
good one but there are some staff who have been here for a very long time and
they do feel that the new appraisal system is a whip to beat them and it’s very
hard to get them to change their minds. But if it is done properly then people
needn’t fear it. I’ve had a head of faculty saying ‘I don’t want you telling people
that I’m outstanding’ and I said ‘well what would you want me to say? This is
the language of the profession that we are in.’ I said to him that schools are
aspiring to be outstanding and many schools have already achieved that
accolade so I am not going to apologise for praising people where it is due.
PA
So you are trying to facilitate a kind of cultural shift.
Definitely. It tends to be the ones who have been here a bit longer. Gail used to
do two Open Door fortnights in a year where staff go into each other’s lessons
for fifteen minutes to observe what’s going on. And I said that I wanted to do
Open Door all the time. I had one head of faculty say to me ‘it’s my classroom
and no one walks in without my say so’. And I wasn’t expecting this or ready for
it but, again, I brought it back to why we are here. It doesn’t matter how long
someone has been teaching there is always something to learn etc. But I want
to encourage this Open Door community because that is how we will move
forward and that is how I dealt with that. My first big training day is on Friday
where we are looking at outstanding learning and I’ve got someone coming in
next week to look at Gifted & Talented.
PA
You said that the school is very much led and directed by external policy but
there are different ways to comply, aren’t there?
I mean the final decision is with Alison whatever happens and so she decides
what’s important and her policy is //
PA
Do you feel shackled by policy or is that too strong a word?
I don’t feel shackled by policy because I’ve got a lot of experience behind me
and Alison wants outstanding and so she is putting structures into place to
achieve that and that is why I don’t feel shackled by it because if you are doing
your job right then you have nothing to worry about. And we share a similar
ethos which is about producing well-formed individuals and it’s about us finding
the best way for these girls in Handsworth to achieve and to be well formed
individuals. So Alison will do that her way.
PA
Thank you very much.
Assistant head
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